John McCain and the Elites
**Update Below**Senator John McCain is visiting the Milwaukee area today and plans to have what he is calling an ‘economic summit.’ What is telling is who John McCain has decided to include in the discussion. Both panels at the event are stacked with nothing but CEO’s of large corporations. This includes one board member of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce as well as their President. It would be wrong to think that these corporate leaders are the only ones qualified to speak about the broader economy. Some of the issues that are on the agenda are things such as education, healthcare, and housing. Does John McCain really believe that CEO’s and the corporate elite are the only ones qualified to contribute on those issues? How elitist of him!
If you are going to speak about healthcare issues, why not include working people that struggle to pay ever increasing medical costs? Instead McCain has a CEO. If you are going to talk about housing, why lock out people that have fallen pray to predatory lenders? Instead McCain has a Mortgage Company CEO. In many ways regular folks are the people that are on the front lines of all aspects in this economy. These are the kinds of people that sounded the alarm long ago about our troubling economy. Yet these are the very people that McCain has locked out in favor of the corporate elite.
UPDATE: We may have found a few more reasons for McCain’s elite-only summit today:
‘As McCain touts his tax plan at the manufacturing plant in Milwaukee today to allow for the expensing of equipment, McCain will be helping out the very manufacturing industry that has helped him over the years ‘ to the tune or $838,415 in campaign donations over his lifetime, according to a Public Campaign Action Fund analysis of campaign finance data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.’
Let me get this straight. McCain receives massive amounts of cash from manufacturing interests, shows up to an elite-only ‘economic summit’ to listen to manufacturers who will then cash in handsomely if his proposed loopholes are enacted? No wonder he locked out the public today, he has more important constituencies to please.